


Fill The Gap Between You And I

by dramatispersonae



Series: As One Door Closes [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Cats, Dubiously Consensual Friendships, It/Its Pronouns for The Distortion (The Magnus Archives), Mary Keay's A+ Parenting, Monster Courtship, Other, Possessive Behavior, aftermath of abuse, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:27:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24412813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramatispersonae/pseuds/dramatispersonae
Summary: Michael, like a cat, expresses affection with gifts of dead things. Gerry'stryingnot to be in the business of collecting strays.
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael | The Distortion
Series: As One Door Closes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1762957
Comments: 55
Kudos: 336





	Fill The Gap Between You And I

**Author's Note:**

> hello fellow shippers. what a nice past few weeks we have had, where absolutely nothing was on fire. we are all clear on the fact that the distortion is (at least) tens of thousands of years old, yes? okay, cool. in this installment, michael gives Presents, and gerry comes to conclusions slightly to the left of 'correct.' title is from the Of Monsters And Men song [We Sink](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ofmonstersandmen/wesink.html). as ever, many thanks to [aromantic-eight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rbmifan/pseuds/aromantic-eight) for beta-reading, and much appreciation to [asexuelf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asexuelf) for cheerleading ^-^

There are a few things Gerry has noticed about his life now that his mum's no longer a part of it.

One, she scared the hell out of him, and it left… imprints. Gerry knows a lot about fear: how it looks, how it works, what it can make people do. The last one especially. But somehow, he hadn't thought about what it did to him. He hadn't ever had the chance to look at the fear as someone who could observe it rather than someone who could only put his head down and live it. He can now. And he can see the shapes it left.

For example, he's managed to make Pinhole Books into a place where he can exist. It doesn't look like it used to. But he doesn't know how to take up all the space he's opened up. It shouldn't be enough to be daunting — he hasn't even tried to clean out his mum's room beyond making sure any awful books she was keeping in there were properly disposed of — but it just feels… weird. He's used to keeping his possessions contained to his room. Even leaving his jacket or boots out feels strange, and he can't figure out why until he remembers that he's lost a few items of clothing that way, mysteriously vanished when they were out of his space and out of his sight. They disappeared out of his room, too, but less often. He's jumpy, too, occasionally seized by a sudden tense panic that he can't trace to anything beyond it having been a while since he's seen his mum. Of course it's been a while. She's _dead_ , truly and completely. But her being gone a while used to mean she'd come back mad, angry about the time denied to her by the improper binding.

Two, he doesn't know anyone. Like the fear, this is something he was already aware of. But it's hitting him in a whole new way, in an empty house. His mum was driven and focused and supremely unhappy with his rejection both of her intended plans for her legacy and his failure to help bind her to the book, but she was someone to _talk_ to. She said words to him. He'd never imagined how incredibly weird going up to a week without speaking to another person could feel. It's not always a bad thing, completely, since he's never been social (would he have been social, with a different life?) but it highlights something deeper and more cutting than simple loneliness. It's not about being alone. It's about absence.

Three, related to but distinct from the absence of others, is the absence of ideas for what to do with himself. He doesn't really… have hobbies? He has things he knows how to do, and things he likes, but he's not sure how to combine them into shapes that fill the new spaces in his life. Listening to music is good, but it turns out listening to music and laying in bed gets kind of boring when you're not also aggressively ignoring the horrible things happening outside your door. He feeds birds, but that's not a hobby, he thinks, as long as he refuses to photograph the birds or look at them through binoculars or learn their proper names. And trawling for cursed book listings and poking at the local cults to see what you might be able to ruin isn't a hobby, either. He has all this time and little idea what to do with it.

And then there's a separate but related problem, stemming from why his mum is no longer a part of his life. The manifestation(s?) of the Spiral have failed to lose interest in him.

He's tried ignoring them. It's easier with the doors — if he sees one and doesn't interact with it, it goes away. Michael, however…

Michael has been sitting on the _same park bench_ for three days now while Gerry has pretended he didn't see it. That, or it just managed to be there every time Gerry walked past that specific bench. Of the two options, Gerry isn't sure what's worse. 

He's just barely standing close enough to see the bench and verify that Michael is there, trying to decide what he's supposed to do about this. Surely it has more things to do in the world than sit on a bench waiting for him, but he's certain that's what it's doing. He's certain it's not going to stop being there until he does. Theoretically, the ability to freeze Michael in place by not speaking to it should be in some way… reassuring? That's not quite the right word. But if it's in the same spot, it's not off terrorizing other people, right? Except there's no way that stops the doors from going places. Also it's just a very uncomfortable thing for Michael to do, in itself.

So Gerry now finds himself in the position of trying to come up with a conversation to have with a Spiral monster, because he doubts that Michael will be content with just a 'hello.' Not after three days.

He actually didn't see it on the first day, or at least didn't recognize it, walking past the park just for the sake of being not-in-the-house. He used to go on walks to get away from his mum, and he hasn't fallen out of the habit yet, mostly because he doesn't want to create more huge gaping spaces of doing nothing in his routines. And because being in the house is still weird sometimes. So he walks, going nowhere in particular, usually with music in his headphones and only enough awareness of his surroundings to avoid walking into someone or getting hit by a car.

He might have missed it entirely if there hadn't been for the weird… it's almost like a Leitner, or an inverse of the 'this is completely normal' aura the doors have, but not totally. It's like Michael wanted people to look at it, just to make people question why they were looking at it, and why they felt like something was off even though it was obviously a regular human person. Gerry knew better, so that last bit didn't quite stick. He knew damn well why something felt off. And he also knew he didn't want to deal with whatever Michael was doing. He kept walking.

But it was there the next day. Same spot.

He almost decided against walking by the park today, but… he had to know. So he went. And here he is. And so is Michael, for the third day in a row. And he should figure out something to say. Maybe. Actually, maybe he'll just wing it, because he's been standing here so long continuing to wait might be worse, and it's not like he can have high hopes for remembering any plans or preconceived ideas of what he should do or say once he's actually talking to Michael.

He's going to wing it.

Gerry walks over to the bench and sits beside Michael. Michael has a leaf in its hair. It doesn't seem to be aware of this. It doesn't seem to be aware of anything, staring off into the distance at nothing, or what appears to be nothing. Gerry thinks if he followed Michael's gaze and tried to see what it was seeing, then it would no longer be looking at 'nothing' and Gerry would not like what he saw instead. So, not looking where it's looking, but not quite looking at it either, he says, "Eat any good books lately?"

Michael laughs. The sound buzzes in Gerry's fingernails. "I didn't _eat_ this one."

Gerry meant that to be a joke. He does not know how he feels about this turn of events. "Uh."

"I saved you a souvenir," it says, reaching a hand into its jacket. It withdraws a little ziploc bag, containing a soggy piece of paper that seems to have been soaked through by… meat juice. Lovely. So Gerry is going to take a wild guess and say it's one of Leitner's bookplates. "Or… proof? Proof is a funny concept. Evidence. A keepsake." It holds the bag out to Gerry.

Gerry takes it. He doesn't want it, but he takes it. "Is this what you do when you're not trying to eat drunk people in alleyways? Destroy books?" He doesn't know why a monster would be inclined to do such a thing, but. Spiral. 'Why' doesn't work with the Spiral. He also doesn't like the idea that Michael has been sitting on this bench for three days waiting for him, specifically.

"It could be," Michael says. "I am capable of it. And… I am interested in helping."

"You're interested in helping," Gerry says flatly.

"Yes."

"Who?"

It gives a brief giggle, like popping bubbles. "I'm interested in helping you. In seeing what you do on your own, no Mary, no Archivist."

What Gerry has done without his mum is singularly unimpressive. But he has the terrible feeling that expressing that might make Michael think that it can offer suggestions for activities. So he directs his focus to a different part of that statement. "I don't know why you keep bringing the Archivist up," Gerry says. "I've never even met her."

"She's run out of assistants. Not out of assistance, mind, but she might miss the convenience of having someone to hand. Or to hand over, if the occasion calls for it." Gerry has barely managed to puzzle out that it said 'assistants' and then 'assistance' when it continues. "She will notice that Mary is gone. At some point. I would prefer to… delay that. Allow you to pursue your goals without her."

"And if I walked up to the Magnus Institute and asked her for a job?" Gerry asks, because decades with his mum couldn't break him of the habit of being contrary for absolutely no reason. He's aware that saying that is a bad idea, but that awareness has no impact on his choice to say it. He never claimed to be smart. And he's still adjusting to caring about whether he lives or dies.

"Then you might get a job. The outcome would cease to concern me," Michael says, in a flat, neutral tone. Gerry barely hears it. There's a shrill ringing in his ears and a tightness in his chest, a digging, stabbing feeling like refusal. Michael's not touching him, still sat in the same place, no expression, but the way the feeling _twists_ leaves no question of its origin.

Then it releases, and Gerry proves that he has learned nothing, possibly ever in his life. "You're a really shitty liar," he says.

Michael tilts its head. Its hair shifts, and the leaf shifts too, though not enough to come loose.

"Unless you're trying to be contradictory on purpose. Your mouth says 'I don't care what you do' and your invisible stabbing says 'don't you dare.'"

"I don't understand," it says.

"Whatever that thing you just did was. With the," Gerry mimes claws, hooking his fingers down. "You made me feel things. You know. Like you do."

Michael blinks. Gerry feels like its eyes are a different color when they open again, but he can't remember what color they were before. "Ah," it says. "Were you affected so strongly? I didn't realize."

"You want me to believe that?"

Michael spreads its hands. As placating gestures go, this one doesn't really work for it. "I have no more reason to lie about this than I do anything else."

That is, at least, easier to accept than an assurance that it wouldn't lie, considering. He doesn't know if he believes it, but he at least feels a little more comfortable entertaining the possibility of doing so. "So you made me feel that way accidentally. You just… didn't notice."

"I have little cause to track my effect on humans, aside from the obvious reasons to do so," it says. "Either way, I do not receive much feedback."

That is also fairly easy to accept. He's still not sure if he does. "Okay. Well. Don't do that."

"I can make no promises. It is not within my nature to be contained." There's a sardonic emphasis on the last few words, and Gerry finds curiosity tugging at him. They feel significant somehow. Like something he ought to know, or at least ought to want to know. A meaning, a mystery, a thing to be pursued. He feels like he might not actually be able to blame Beholding for this, because his Eye-senses get so thoroughly tangled and refracted in the face of Michael's power he doubts he'd be able to get any helpful signposts for what to follow up on. No, this is just him, wanting to know, getting wrapped up in things he should know better than to touch.

"I don't care about your nature," Gerry says, which is barely on the right side of not-a-lie. He doesn't care about Michael's nature in the specific context of whether or not that should allow it to make him feel like he's been gripped in the talons of a giant bird made of discontent. But he wants to know more. He wants to know what it is, what it can do, why it acts the way it does. "I care about your manners. Don't make me feel things."

It hums a curious, interested note, and Gerry gets the horrible sense that it can recognize the way what he said brushed against falsehood. "Is it always rude, to communicate emotions?"

"It's rude to do it like that when I'm telling you not to do it. Which I am."

"I don't know if I can inhibit that," it says. It sounds intrigued by the prospect. "I've never tried. I, I'm not sure where I would begin. How do you draw the bounds between 'like that' and not?"

Gerry opens his mouth, then pauses, closes his mouth again. 'Don't make me feel your feelings' is… really broad. Doesn't interacting with anyone else carry the possibility of sharing feelings? Maybe it doesn't count as 'making' them feel feelings… but that is how it's said, isn't it? Making someone happy, for example. And it is… kind of useful to be able to tell what Michael's feeling. It gives him advanced warning, anyway. Or additional insight.

"Okay," Gerry says. "Just try not to make it feel like I'm getting stabbed by your feelings. Alright?"

"Is that what it felt like? How interesting," Michael says. "I don't know if I will be able to prevent that, as I didn't know I was doing it in the first place. But I will remember that you do not like to be stabbed."

"You know what, if that's your takeaway from the conversation, that's fine," Gerry says. He slumps back against the bench. There's still a leaf in Michael's hair. Gerry wants to remove it, but more than that, he wants to avoid touching Michael. He does not want to get bitten by its hair or get pumped full of electricity or any of the other myriad bad things that could happen if he made contact with it. Taking the leaf wouldn't be worth it. "You know a lot about the Archivist, huh?"

"More than I have ever desired to."

"You wanna tell me why?"

"No."

Its tone leaves little room for argument, and the clearly unhappy look on its face indicates this is a subject better left alone. And he will leave it alone. After a few more questions. "Fair enough," Gerry says. "But you know, a monster thinking someone's bad news kind of implies they might be someone you want on your side."

Michael laughs. It is a deeply unpleasant sound. "You cannot have the Archivist on your side. You can only join hers."

Of course it would say that. It's going to try to keep him away from any allies who could help him defend against it. An Archivist would have a much stronger connection to the Eye than Gerry's paltry, stolen scraps, and who knows how a thing like Michael would react to being really Looked at. Maybe Gertrude Robinson has already hurt it before. He wouldn't doubt it. She's a bit of a legend, and there is something very personal about the way Michael hates her. And anyway, he shouldn't trust Michael to have anything like his best interests at heart.

But his mum knew Gertrude Robinson.

And for Gertrude Robinson to have come away from that intact, and for his mum to have talked about her the way she, very occasionally, did…

Yeah. Yeah, he can believe that Gertrude is the kind to bend people to her use or discard them. His mum wasn't one for partnerships, but she wasn't one to suffer rivals, either, and Gertrude was very much a rival in his mum's eyes. Gertrude's not someone he should trust, either. Maybe even less than he should trust Michael. He doesn't know Gertrude. She's done fuck-all for him, and Michael… Michael released his mum's ghost. Michael hasn't eaten him. That means something, even if Gerry's not exactly sure _what_ it means.

He's tired of being a piece in other people's games, anyway.

"Right," he says. "So what, exactly, do you think I'm doing that you're going to help with?"

This time, the brush of feelings is much quieter and significantly less painful. An amused, inquisitive trill tapping along his arms. "I'm not sure," Michael says. "That is part of what interests me. I assumed you liked destroying books, so I destroyed one. If you have alternate suggestions, I am… open to hearing them."

The books.

The thing about the books is that they cause the most constant, indiscriminate misery of anything he's seen. They do it all — eat people, enslave them, change them, warp the whole world around them. They're always _on_. Any time anyone encounters one of the books, they're in danger. Even the humans (or former-humans, or never-humans) that serve the Powers aren't like that. They aren't always present in the world and hunting. They're not always out to ensnare everyone and anyone in their vicinity. When they are, that's not great, but the books don't do anything else.

And while fire usually takes care of a lot of them, if Michael has a way of tracking down books, a way of destroying them just as surely as fire, is it really right to turn that down? Even if it feels like it must be a trick of some kind? Is his life really worth so much that he should refuse an offer to destroy Leitners just because doing so might delay his death at Michael's stabby hands?

The whole 'wanting to be alive' thing is still a work in progress, so he can't tell if that's a ruthlessly practical view or a passively suicidal one. He doesn't know how much of a will to live he can really afford to have, but his current level of care for his own life is probably still not great. This situation is not helping.

Michael is waiting with something that looks remarkably like patience. Looks can be deceiving. They usually are, as far as the Spiral is concerned.

"Destroying Leitners is good," Gerry says. "I, uh. Appreciate it."

Michael smiles radiantly. The teeth that make up the smile are not human, not normal, but despite their evident sharpness, Gerry has trouble thinking of the sight as threatening. Michael is too clearly joyful. He knows, distantly, that it is bad for him to ever not see Michael as threatening, but it's hard to focus on that when there's so much happiness sparking around it. "Do they need to have his name in them, or will any of the books do?"

"Any of the books. The ones with… you know, freaky magic powers."

"Yes. Those are the ones that matter." Michael hums. "Is there anything else you would find helpful?"

 _Stop eating people. Stop being a monster. Leave me alone_ , Gerry doesn't say. "I'll let you know," he says instead.

Michael nods, and then looks up. "It may rain soon," it says. "You aren't wearing the right kind of jacket for that."

The sky isn't clear, but it doesn't look any more overtly stormy than before. Gerry will take the out anyway. "I'll head home, then," he says. "You should go somewhere else too. If it's going to be raining." He hopes that doesn't sound like an invitation to his place. He just wants Michael not to be in the park any more. He doesn't know if it would accept being turned down if it decides it wants to follow him home.

It stands and stretches, with a sound halfway between snapping joints and tearing fabric. Gerry winces. "Yes," it says. "I should. I'll be seeing you, Gerard."

He doesn't see exactly how it disappears, only that it does. He tries to feel relieved. And then he stays sat on the bench out of a paranoid anxiety that Michael was trying to get him to go home because something bad would happen to him there, until the first droplets of rain spatter over his trousers.

* * *

Gerry finds the bookplate under his pillow.

To be more precise, his arm slides over something smooth and unfamiliar when he's settling in for the night, and, like any unexpected stimulus is wont to do, it rockets him into something that's not quite _alert_ but is definitely _awake_. He jumps up out of bed, accidentally throwing his pillow across the room, and runs to the lightswitch.

The bookplate winks, white paper against black sheets, at the head of his bed. He's sure it's a bookplate before he even approaches it, because there's nothing else it could be. And that means Michael was in his room. Or has a way of putting things in his room. This just gets better and better. At least this one isn't wet, so he doesn't have to worry about getting supernatural meat juices out of his sheets. He does see faint, thin scratches around the edges, though whether they're a consequence of the book it was attached to or its removal is unclear and not worth investigating.

Is this an improvement on sitting in the park for three days? Gerry is going to have to say no.

He finds the next bookplate, two weeks later, in a box of tea. Then another, four days later, in his sock drawer. 'How is Michael getting into the house' is not a hard question, given the doors (which still, on occasion, pop up in Gerry's vicinity), and neither is 'how does Gerry not ever see it do so,' but that doesn't mean this isn't deeply uncomfortable. He finds himself actually wanting to see Michael again, if only so he can tell it to stop.

Naturally, he doesn't see it. The days drag on. Gerry doesn't develop any more hobbies.

Save one.

"Psspss," Gerry says, wiggling his fingers invitingly at the cat sitting at the end of the sidewalk.

It turns towards him, conveying the kind of superior disinterest that only cats are capable of, then stands and begins to walk away.

"Goddammit," Gerry says, and begins to walk after it. Not run, he doesn't want to scare it, since scaring the cat into the street would be the exact opposite of what he's trying to accomplish. He is trying to pursue it so it can be not-in-the-street.

He _thinks_ it has the right markings to be the cat on one of the latest 'missing cat' posters he's seen. It's a tuxedo cat with white socks and half a white mustache, which, while not a completely one-of-a-kind coloration, is distinct enough that he's relatively confident in his choice to try to catch it. It's also wearing a bright green collar, so he can cross-compare the contact information on the tag and on the poster to see if he's got the right animal. If he actually catches it.

The cat continues to jog leisurely down the sidewalk. Occasionally, it stops, and glances backwards over its shoulder at Gerry before resuming its unbothered strut. Right now it seems perfectly happy to follow the sidewalk at a pace slightly quicker than Gerry's. If it goes over a wall, he's leaving. Definitely. He's not going to flirt with getting arrested for trespassing over a cat. He risks getting arrested for trespassing often enough over much more important things.

But he's going to keep following it until that happens or he catches it, because Gerry has decided this is what he's doing with his time. Shooing cats out of dangerous areas. Collecting photos of lost pet posters and keeping an eye out. Picking up runaway cats and, if he can't get them back where they belong immediately, stashing them somewhere safe. 'Somewhere safe' has ended up being his place often enough that he's now got a few cat supplies stocked at all times, food and dishes and a litterbox and some toys, so they're comfortable while he tries to get in contact with their people. He's resisting the urge to _keep_ a cat, since most of them do actually have homes already, but he doesn't know how long he'll be able to hold out. He doesn't want to end up dead somewhere and leave the cat trapped in his house, but… it would be nice to have company. Nice to have something a little less complicated than the movements and machinations of primal, alien forces to worry about. Or maybe he'll go back to an old idea and get a snake. He'd decided against due to being out of the house too often and lacking enough freedom with his time or money to be a good pet owner, but things have changed.

The cat stops entirely, and Gerry manages to get almost in reach of it before it darts off, white socks flashing. He swears and picks up speed. Even if he can't catch it, he needs to at least make sure it's not running into a car.

It's not.

It's running into an open doorway.

Gerry pulls up short as the cat slips through the door, which feels like it definitely belongs on this building, despite being off the side of it, in contrast to the other door, which actually faces the sidewalk and matches the general aesthetic of the architecture. The door the cat went into is painted a violent pink with purple spatters and bears an ornate, curling door handle. This is not a door he's seen before. Which, of course, means he knows exactly where this door goes.

It wouldn't have been his responsibility if the cat disappeared somewhere normal. He'd already made up his mind about that. But the door is here because he's here, which means it's his fault if the cat gets eaten. So it's his responsibility to go after it. 

He's never actually been in the corridors. He just ignores the doors, when they appear, unwilling to get caught in their inviting come-inside pull ever again. Presumably that pull means he won't have any trouble getting in, but whether it will let him leave...

The door opens further without being touched. Michael is standing in the doorway, holding the cat. It looks about as confused as Gerry feels. "Did you… drop this?" it asks. The cat, for its part, seems to be frozen with indecision. It definitely doesn't look happy in Michael's arms, but it's also not struggling. Looking at it closer, Gerry is relatively secure in his assessment that it's the cat from the poster. So on the one hand, good call trying to get it, someone's looking for it. On the other hand, he did just chase it into a hell hallway.

"Uh. Sort of. I was trying to catch it," Gerry says. "Can I have it?"

"Is it yours?" Michael asks, shifting its grip on the cat. It's not holding the cat wrong in a dangerous way, but it clearly doesn't know how to arrange the cat to settle comfortably. The cat appears to be dissociating. 

"I'm trying to return it," Gerry says.

"Where does it go?" Michael asks, glancing downwards at the cat.

"Back to its own house," Gerry says. "Can you give it back to me?"

Michael, with evident reluctance, holds the cat out towards Gerry. Gerry takes it, supporting its rear with one hand and holding it across the shoulders with the other as he settles it against his chest. The cat, regardless of what its opinion of him might have been before, seems completely willing to cling to him with blunt claws. "Do you have to give it back?" Michael asks.

"It belongs to someone else." The concept of 'ownership' does seem to be one that has at least a reasonable equivalent in the language of monsters, so hopefully that will be a satisfactory explanation.

"Oh," Michael says, disappointed. "But you're taking it?"

"Yeah," Gerry says. "I'm giving it back." He checks the tags on the cat's collar, then cross-checks with his picture of the poster, balancing the cat in one arm and hoping it doesn't take the opportunity to escape. The phone numbers match. So does the cat's name, 'Madame Tusky.' "I just have to call the owner…" he trails off, unsure if he wants to push his luck and keep holding Madame Tusky one-handed. He doesn't exactly want to _trust_ Michael, but he trusts it to follow instructions more than he trusts a cat not to run away. "Can you hold her while I'm on the phone?"

Michael plucks Madame Tusky from Gerry's arms. It holds her properly this time, mirroring the way Gerry held her when he had both his hands free. The cat both does and doesn't make Michael easier to look at. Madame Tusky is a relatively unchanging point of reference, but also the contrast between her (a genuine physical presence) and the thing holding her (not that) is a bit like putting two neon colors right next to each other. The borders hurt to look at.

Gerry dials the number and gets directed to voicemail. Fantastic.

"Hi, my name is…" they're going to have to come to the area around Pinhole Books to pick up the cat and may connect him with the grisly alleged murder that happened there, but he doesn't have to provide his last name and increase the chances of the connection happening _before_ they come get their cat, "Gerard, and I found Madame Tusky. I'm going to take her to my place so she doesn't run away anywhere, give me a call at," he recites his phone number, "when you can and I'll give you the address."

Then he hangs up. And considers his options.

He could try to get Michael to go away right now. But it might not listen. And he'd have to take Madame Tusky home by himself, with no backup if she gets loose. He could have Michael help him bring her back, but he doesn't know that he'll be able to keep it from coming into his house. As previously established, Michael cannot be prevented from doing things, only redirected, at best. He doesn't know how he'd get it to leave his house once it was in there. It can stay in one place for a very long time, if it wants to.

But he wants to get the cat home, and if he's going to have to have an argument with Michael where he tries to get it to go away he doesn't want to have the argument on the sidewalk, and he also doesn't want to borrow trouble, because dealing with Michael opens up an entire universe of possible things that could go wrong and if he tries to catalogue all of them he'll… well. Go mad, probably.

"I'm taking her back to my place to wait for her owner," Gerry says, tucking his phone into his pocket. "Do you want to help?"

He almost hears a faint, dissatisfied static crackle, something popping and breaking at the very edges of his hearing. Michael begins to solidify, becoming physical enough to match Madame Tusky. It is no less discomfiting to look at, because it looks unhappy, and that can't be good. "Do you want me to?" it returns.

Gerry tries to figure out where, exactly, he fucked up. 'Back in the alley of a small town, intervening when someone was going to get eaten by a door' is the obvious answer, but he needs to figure out whatever happened _just now_. "... yes?" he tries.

"Then I will," Michael says, and fuzzes out at the edges.

Great. Okay. He fixed that, maybe. Whatever 'that' was. Something to file away and examine when he can think more clearly. "Can you pass me the cat?" he asks, and Michael hands Madame Tusky back to him. She won't be all that much safer with him, considering Michael will still be following them, but he'd rather she not be in Michael's hands if they get all pointy.

He begins to walk towards home. Michael keeps pace with him easily, even though it stops semi-frequently to look at things. Weeds, mostly, growing up in cracks in the pavement. A few times, it stops and looks at the streetlights for a while before catching up to Gerry with irritating ease. Once, Gerry sees it start to stray towards some sidewalk chalk drawings, and gives it a sharp, direct "No." It returns to his side immediately, grinning brightly. The chalk doesn't seem to have come to life or gained any new and impossible curves, so Gerry moves on.

Madame Tusky continues to allow herself to be carried, pressing her angular head against Gerry's chest. She's not purring, but she's not yowling and trying to take his skin off, so Gerry considers that as much of an endorsement of his actions as he's going to get.

"Do you like cats, Gerard?" Michael asks.

Gerry wonders if this is the lead-in to something terrible, then decides there's not much he could do if it was. "Yeah, they're pretty cool," he says. "Do you?"

It stumbles, as if the inquiry were a physical obstacle it ran into unexpectedly. "Do… I?" it says, with far more uncertainty than Gerry thinks that question really deserves. "They are… soft. Confusing. They have claws."

"You're not wrong," Gerry says. "That's not what I asked, but you're not wrong."

"I do not know how to 'like,'" it says.

"Yeah, you do," Gerry says. "You told me you like keeping deals, remember?" At least, he thought it did. That was something that had stuck with him. It had told him it liked to keep deals, and so for all that he tried to imagine it not following him, of going back to Morden and never seeing it again, he couldn't shake the feeling that it would. They had a deal, as it later reminded him, shaping his lips around the words as it blocked his ability to say anything else.

"I did?" it says. "Is that something I like?"

"You said you did," Gerry says. "But your guess is as good as mine."

"I don't know if that's accurate," Michael says. It sounds mildly frustrated, like this actually bothers it. A few things come together in Gerry's head.

For the first time, he considers the idea that Michael might be _new_. The formation of monsters isn't something he knows a lot about — or something anyone knows a lot about, he'd bet — but it's not only former-humans out there. There's also nonhuman things, monsters made wholly of fear, and even direct manifestations of the Powers themselves. Michael and the doors are almost certainly one of those, something that is and has always been Spiral. He'd toyed with the idea of it being a very, very old former-human, so thoroughly saturated in Spiral that humanity was a footnote in its history, but discarded it after a while. It just doesn't seem right. There have been moments where it seemed more human than a monster should, but they felt… off. Like they didn't match. He's pretty set on the idea that it was never human. But could it be a new monster? Something come into the world so recently that it's still adjusting? He'd thought it felt old, but he could have just been confusing 'old' with 'powerful'.

If it's new, that would explain why it knows so little about itself. Why it's apparently latched on to Gerry for direction. And if it's new…

Nature and nurture aren't totally applicable to things born from bubbling primordial fear ooze. But monsters learn. They adapt. They change. What could a young fear monster be changed into, given the right circumstances? How might it be redirected?

Gerry knows he has about as much of a chance of getting Michael not to eat people's fear as getting a snake to thrive on a kale-only diet. He doesn't know if monsters can starve, exactly, but they're made of fear. It's what they are, how they perpetuate. Why they exist, probably. But maybe he could, if not make it totally harmless, balance out what it does in the world.

Hubris, probably. Really deeply unlikely to work. But possibly worth the effort.

Madame Tusky stays docile and agreeable right until they get home and Gerry opens the door. Then she launches herself out of his arms and up the stairs with terrified determination. Out of the corner of his eye, Gerry sees Michael tense, leaning in and down like it's readying to chase after the cat. Before he can interrupt (there would be no good way to interrupt _that_ , but 'no good way to do it' has never been enough to stop Gerry from anything) Michael straightens with a clearly forced ease. Gerry feels something brushing against his mind, the scent of warm laundry and a feeling like… waiting? Wanting? It's hard enough to tell what his own feelings are. Identifying the specifics of foreign feelings is even harder.

Whatever it is Michael is feeling, it seems capable of accepting Gerry's non-response, and heads up the stairs with a gait that only looks a little bit like a predator's stalk. Gerry follows, because while he doesn't think Michael wants to hurt Madame Tusky (if it did want to, it had more than enough opportunity to while she was in the corridor), the amount of trust he has that Michael won't change its mind or act on a random whim is approximately zero. So now he's got to keep track of both of them until Madame Tusky's owner takes her back, or until Michael leaves. 

He finds Madame Tusky by following Michael and the sound of banging wood, and arrives just in time to see her succeed in opening a kitchen cabinet and crawling inside. Michael watches with detached fascination. "Don't harass her," Gerry says.

"She's interesting," it says.

"That doesn't mean you should make her uncomfortable," Gerry says. He wonders if Michael will take this lesson to heart and also stop harassing him just because it finds him _interesting_. He doubts it.

What do you do with a new monster? What can you expect it to understand, beyond the taste of human fear?

Ownership. Friendship, apparently, though what that means to Michael Gerry's still not sure. It might not even be a distinct concept from ownership. Thought who, precisely, owns whom…

Obviously the power is with Michael. Obviously. Michael could kill Gerry at any moment. Michael could probably kill Gerry accidentally, without even noticing or realizing what it had done. But it's relying on him. It's relying on him to direct it, to a certain extent. And it seems to be relying on him to define it. That's a form of power, too.

He wonders what would happen if he did tell it to stop eating people. Would it listen? Would it try? Should he do that? Is it worth trying because of the miniscule possibility that he could save Michael's future victims, or because of the also miniscule possibility that he could cause it some discomfort with its nature? Or maybe he should just say it's enough that he's managed to convince Michael to destroy Leitners, and not push for something that is deeply unlikely to work and very likely to get him killed.

Is that selfishness, or a will to live?

Gerry becomes abruptly aware of the fact that Michael is staring at him, very intently, and very closely. He flinches only the slightest bit, but he knows Michael notices, attuned as monsters are to any sign of surprise, discomfort, or fear. "What?" he demands. "What do you want?"

It draws back like it's been hit, bares its teeth in an animal snarl. Its teeth are human, blunt and regular, but that does not make the display any less threatening. "Stop that," it says.

"Stop _what_?" Gerry says, rattled by the sudden aggression. He glances, reflexively, at its hands. Also human, also blunt, though the fingers are curled into shapes that are reminiscent of claws even if they don't seem to literally be claws. Yet. This is also not very reassuring. Michael seems overall more solid, more real, and it doesn't feel right. It feels like there's something happening that he desperately needs to understand and can't, thoughts choked and insides twisted, his brain looped around his tongue looped around his stomach. "I don't know what I did, and this will be easier for both of us if you just tell me instead of getting pointy about it." It's less pointy than normal, physically, but the spiritual pontiness more than makes up for it. "You're a _monster_. I don't know what you're like."

Gerry's phone goes off, and this time it's Michael that flinches. It flinches so hard it becomes mildly immaterial, the kitchen lights shining through it. Gerry answers his phone before Michael decides to take vengeance on it.

"Hello?"

"Hello? This is Jasmine, you found my cat?"

"Yeah, I've got her at my place," Gerry says. "I have a carrier I can put her in, if you want to meet somewhere?"

"Yes, yes please. Thank you so much for finding her. She gets away every few months, I don't know how she does it. I'm so glad you found her."

"It's no problem, really," Gerry says, quietly grateful that he won't have to deal with trying to deal with the mess that is trying to give people directions to Pinhole Books. If they have something Pinhole Books wants, they can't stay away. If they don't, they usually can't find the place at all. Pinhole Books has had enough consistent contact with things touched by Powers that it's slightly out of sync with reality. He doesn't know if it'll go back to normal if he leaves and takes the rest of his mum's legacy with him, but it's certainly not going to be normal as long as he lives there. He gives Jasmine his general area, and Jasmine selects a meeting location.

When Gerry hangs up, Michael is gone, without so much as a new door left to mark its passage. That's fine. He's glad it's gone. He can get Madame Tusky back home on his own. He's returned lost cats enough times, he knows what to do.

But he also knows something significant happened between him and Michael. Something made it angry, and Gerry doesn't know what or why. He feels like he's been given information about a plot point in a story he hasn't even read the introduction to. He knows he really ought to figure this out, if only to avoid angering Michael enough for it to stab him or turn his world into an eternal bad acid trip, but he doesn't know where to start. It's not like there are naturalist's guides to monsters (none he'd want to use, that is), and it's not like a new monster would be likely to appear in one anyway.

He's going to have to figure this one out alone. After he gets Madame Tusky out of the cabinet and back to Jasmine.

At least he has something to do with his time now.


End file.
